Markus Thielen from 10x Research talks about the market pressures that aided bitcoin's recent rally, and what comes next.

New York

Markus Thielen from 10x Research has indicated that bitcoin could potentially reach between $140,000 and $160,000 by the end of 2025, citing recent uptrend signals and significant institutional investment. Thielen notes that while retail investors have shown limited participation, institutional buyers and bitcoin ETFs have played a major role, with ETFs acquiring $15 billion in recent weeks.

He also highlights that the supply of bitcoin on exchanges has decreased, contributing to upward price pressure. Thielen points out that the main risks to this outlook would be a shift in US Federal Reserve policy or increased regulatory intervention, but currently sees no significant regulatory overhang and expects inflows to continue unless inflation pressures rise sharply.

Bitcoin could hit $160,000 by end-2025: Expert

Marcus, stress test this rally for me. You say we are looking at fresh uptrend signals in this market. Some analysts say we could be on track for $130,000 plus by August or September. Is that realistic? It is realistic just simply from a statistical point of view, because we just had like a short term model breakout literally like 10 days ago. And historically, Bitcoin actually rallied by 20%. So that would bring us actually to $133,000. But, you know, an interesting aspect that you mentioned earlier is really that the retail investors are not really participating. For them, maybe one Bitcoin seems to be too expensive. But on the other side, we have, of course, a lot of corporates, a lot of institutional investors buying. And the Bitcoin ETFs, they have bought $15 billion over the last six to eight weeks. And I think the most interesting aspect is actually that only three crypto exchanges have more than $150,000 BTC left. So there has been a lot of, you know, Bitcoins leaving exchanges. There's not a lot of Bitcoins left on exchanges. And I think that's why a lot of people like scrambling to really get their hands on Bitcoin, because again, there are not many Bitcoins left right now. Interesting you also say that ETF inflows are back. This isn't necessarily new. It's something that we've been tracking in this market for some time now. But how sticky are those inflows today? Yeah, really great point, because when the ETFs really launched early last year, the funding rates, so what is really the premium from the futures versus the spot market was very high. So we saw a lot of multi-strategy hedge funds that are not really directionally exposed really buying these Bitcoin ETFs. But those have actually rolled off almost completely based on our calculations. They accounted for around 50% of all the BTC ETF inflows in March or by March last year. But currently there is less than 1% because the funding rate is very low and the funding rate is usually really correlated to retail speculation, to retail activity. And because the retail investor is not really involved right now, that's why the funding rate stayed low. That's why the hedge funds with arbitrage trading are not really involved. But this is all long only buying. And the interesting aspect is really over the last six weeks when Bitcoin sort of like consolidated up until, of course, the debt ceiling increase and another stimulus package basically from the US, a tax package, the beautiful bill, only then really Bitcoin started to ramp up again. But what we have seen, of course, these ETFs have been buying relentlessly even when Bitcoin consolidated. So there's a huge money shift going out of the US dollars, out of other assets and into Bitcoin. And I think that's really driving the Bitcoin price higher. Indeed. And Markus, your research team flagged this shift from puts to calls in the options market as well a couple of weeks ago. What are the options markets telling us about exactly where BTC could go from here? Well, that's an interesting point because people are looking really at the round numbers. We're not looking at 122. We're looking at 130. We're looking at 140. We're looking at 150. We have a year end target of around 140 to 160. We also had a target of 125 from two years ago. And I think, of course, it requires a lot of money coming into the market. But we're seeing this money now coming in, of course, with these shorts being stopped out of the futures market and plus this gamma from the option market. I think the market actually is gravitating to the next higher strike, which is the 130 level and then potentially the 150,000 level. OK, 150,000. I think you said 160,000 as well, which would be an extraordinary run. Markus, what would you say is the biggest risk to your bull case? And I have to say, it's a pretty aggressive bull case at this point. Well, it didn't look so aggressive or it doesn't look so aggressive now. I think it looked more aggressive beginning of the year. But of course, the biggest risk is that the Fed is going to remain hawkish, might be hiking interest rates because of tariffs. But we don't see this. And when you look historically, which is very, very important, the bull markets usually collapsed once the Fed turned hawkish or once there was more some regulatory overhang really hitting the market. But of course, with this whole SEC really embracing Bitcoin now, there is no regulatory overhang right now. So I think it's very difficult to see how this is going to stop. I think the money is just leaving other assets, going into Bitcoin, and it probably is going to continue until we really see more inflationary pressures. But that's really far away because, again, when you look at inflation expectations, just 2.6% for tomorrow, and that's not going to bring the Fed to dial more and more hawkishly. And so I think it's very difficult to see how this is to dial more and more hawkishly. It's more when we look at Chris Waller or other Fed governors, they have already expressed their dovishness. So the question is only when the Fed is going to cut. And I think in that perspective, it's very difficult to be very bearish here.

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